RED 2
I
enjoyed RED, the movie
about Dame Helen Mirren machine-gunning baddies while wearing a
slinky white evening gown.
RED 2
is more of the same, but it suffers from its lack of novelty. There
are new baddies and a new evening gown, but the entire film basically
exists to showcase older actors shooting younger ones while tossing
off one-liners that make us worry more for their mental health than
their physical safety. It's still fun, but it's not much of a
surprise this time around. You may want to give this one a pass.
===
Oblivion
Oblivion
is a beautifully crafted, high-concept sci-fi action picture – the
kind of thing I usually go for.
In the
film, Tom Cruise plays
a drone repairman in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By night, he
lives in a beautiful, modern outpost. By day, he braves the
wilderness to find downed (alien-hunting) drones, fix them, and sic
them on any Morlock-like aliens they should happen to find.
And away we go. As
I said, I enjoy this kind of thing. And I enjoyed it well enough,
but something about it seemed rote. Cruise ran away from an
explosion. Cruise was forced to choose between improbably beautiful,
age-inappropriate women. Cruise saved the world and earned a
respectful head-nod from a reluctant ally. You know – the usual.
The big concept was the metaphor for American drone wars in a part of
the world that's basically a pre-industrial hellscape. And that
was it.
I'm
not saying that Oblivion
was bad. Generally speaking, Tom Cruise doesn't make bad movies. It
just seemed limp, uninspired. If you're in the mood for a Tom Cruise
science fiction film, go see Edge of Tomorrow
again. Now, that's a movie!
No comments:
Post a Comment